Snapshots
by SnubNosedSilhouette
Summary: Sometimes a photo doesn't tell the whole story


A/N:

Inspired by the following two photosets by somethingofthewolf on Tumblr: post/46047001566/if-t-h-e-y-had-a-twitter-the-doctor and here: post/46047861781/if-t-h-e-y-had-a-twitter-rose

* * *

Firsts

It's their first big Vitex event together, and she's in a slip of a dress strategically cut to display as much skin as possible. It's more of her than he's ever seen except for the handful of times they've slept together in the two weeks since they'd ended up in bed together for the first time. She blushes; suddenly shy as she steps out of the bathroom. His dropped jaw mirrors her own, though, at the sight of pinstripes and a loosely knotted tie.

The suit is strategically charcoal, not brown.

Rose asks Jackie to snap a photo of them with her cell phone as soon as they're all settled at their table, and even though her mum laughs at the blurred image and offers to take another, Rose refuses. It's the first photo she has of them together and looking completely happy.

* * *

Caught

Tony gets a camera for his sixth birthday and spends the next week carefully posing everyone he meets for photographs. Then, one day, he catches Pete unawares while he's brushing his teeth, realizes how hilarious candid shots can be when his subjects don't realize he's taking their picture until it's too late, and the whole family starts locking doors when they don't want to be ambushed by pint-sized paparazzi.

Everyone except Rose and the Doctor. One time. In a broom cupboard. In the basement.

Rose yells something about tossing Tony's camera into a particularly corrosive alien goo, and the Doctor pushes him back out the door before Tony can get more than a quick shot of his sister's outraged expression moments after being snapped with the Doctor's hand up her shirt. Still, he doesn't miss the barely-contained grin on the Doctor's face as he turns his face away from the camera, or the way they don't come out of the cupboard for another twenty minutes.

* * *

Specs

Pregnancy changes many things about Rose Tyler's body, most peculiarly her ability to comfortably wear contacts.

Eleven weeks in she starts getting over the worst of her morning sickness only to wind up with a raging eye infection from a brand of lenses she'd spent the previous six years sporting without complaint. Her opthamoalogist recommends switching to glasses for the remainder of her pregnancy, offering as consolation an anecdote about a patient whose eyesight spontaneously returned to 20/20 while carrying her first baby.

Rose is not amused.

As a joke, the Doctor goes out and buys her new frames that look remarkably like his own brainy specs.

As a joke, she fills her prescription to fit those frames.

Over the next thirty weeks (which should have been twenty-nine, but time is apparently not the boss of their child, who arrives per her own schedule) she wears the glasses to do everything but shower, have sex, and sleep. They become part of her face, a fact the Doctor only belatedly realizes when she abruptly stops wearing them six weeks post-partum.

He misses the glasses, but she's so delighted with her ability to wear contacts again that he's loath to mention it.

Pete throws Rose a surprise party at the pub the night before her first day back at work-her thirtieth birthday. The Doctor gives her a pair of enormous green glasses as a gag gift. She laughs uproariously, modeling them for everyone before tucking in to the cake.

That night, she wears her glasses-the real ones-to bed.

* * *

Mobile

Later, Pete will remind everyone that it was Jackie's idea to take the family skiing in Switzerland that year. It was also Jackie's idea to leave their mobile phones at the lodge because "Torchwood can manage its bloody self for a few hours while we have a holiday."

For the record, Torchwood did "manage its bloody self" without them when an Atraxian ship came barreling into the atmosphere over London at the exact moment Jackie was snapping a shot of Pete, Rose, and the Doctor over hot chocolates after two runs on the slopes.

This fact was little consolation to Pete, who spent the next thirteen family vacations with his phone at his hip at all times. "It's even there when we're in bed!" Jacki complained to Rose, who really hadn't needed the visual.

The day Pete retired, the Doctor had his mobile bronzed. Jackie promptly threw it out the window.

* * *

Youth

The theme for that year's Vitex Fancy Dress party is "We Are Young."

They spend weeks debating the relative merits of leather jackets, plastic shop window dummy masks, and Charles Dickens characters. David Copperfield and Lady Deadlock almost win out until Jake, tired of the conversation, points out that absolutely no one will guess the reference, and could they please focus on the stakeout now?

Then Rose stumbles across the gas masks on eBay and buys them without consulting the Doctor. She doesn't need to.

They pose for silly pictures at the door; shove the masks onto the top of their heads like sunglasses to socialize with the guests; and when the Doctor requests Glen Miller, Rose pulls him in for a snog she later whispers she'd wanted to give him the first time around.

"Dancing" is unquestionably on the itinerary when they get home.

No one gets the reference. They don't care. For a night, they are young again.


End file.
